For the past seven years, Robert Earl Keen has been forging a new holiday tradition with a run of irreverently themed Christmas shows. On December 2nd, the Texas singer and songwriter will kick off his eighth year of concerts with a gig in Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As on tours of Christmases past, this trek \u2014 the Countdown to Christmas Tour \u2014 will feature its own unique theme: Lunar Tunes & Looney Times, a nod to the 50th anniversary of the landing on the moon. Keen, who sang about a voyage to the Earth\u2019s satellite in the Stryker Brothers song \u201cCharlie Duke Took Country Music to the Moon,\u201d will play tunes about the final frontier, the planets, and the Space Race \u2014 along with the centerpiece of the holiday shows, Keen\u2019s fan favorite \u201cMerry Christmas From the Family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The troubadour told Rolling Stone in 2018 that he could never perform on a stage in December without singing that track, originally off 1994\u2019s Gringo Honeymoon. Aware of his obligation, he and his band looked for a way to distinguish their Christmas tours. \u201cPretty much all the people were waiting for that one song,\u201d Keen said. \u201cAfter a while, we got to thinking: \u2018We got to do something more than this. We got to have more fun ourselves.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a release, Keen says the 2019 Christmas shows, which wrap up December 30th in Fort Worth, Texas, will include \u201cfan favorites and unearthly covers from his band members.\u201d The Austin band Shinyribs will open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the past seven years, Robert Earl Keen has been forging a new holiday tradition with a run of irreverently themed Christmas shows. On December 2nd, the Texas singer and songwriter will kick off his eighth year of concerts with a gig in Greenville, South Carolina. As on tours of Christmases past, this trek \u2014 the Countdown to Christmas Tour...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texasace.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}